1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a demand-supply matching technology, and in particular to a computer-implemented method of matching customer demand with production capacity of a plurality of factory facilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
A commercial product must go through many different processes, such as design, manufacture, packaging, and distribution, all of which comprise considerable planning and scheduling. The manufacturing process is often complicated, especially in high technology fields such as IC manufacture, making effective supply chain management an important role.
One significant challenge for supply chain management is to maximize the demand-supply matching rate. In this regard, an effective demand-supply matching methodology utilizes the desired supply to satisfy customer demand as much as possible. It is relatively simple to match demand with desired supply with there is a one-to-one correspondence. However, in many cases, the demand and the desired supply are mismatched. Because of exceedingly high manufacturing costs, resolution of the demand-supply mismatching problem is extremely important for IC manufacturers.
There are known conventional approaches to the demand-supply mismatch problem. One is referred to as Linear Programming (LP). The main purpose of LP is to utilize “LP Boundary” constraints to optimize “Business Objectives” in terms of “given” sets of demand priorities and pre-selected supply directions. LP cannot effectively handle demand-supply mismatching problems directly because it is generally unable to distinguish between alternative solutions if there is no provided preferred or pre-defined demand pattern, thus creating difficulties for IC manufacturers needing a explicit decision for demand-supply matching.
Another conventional approach to the demand-supply mismatch problem is referred to as Material Requirement Planning (MRP). The main idea of MRP is to apply experiential rules to calculate and match demand with supply. Nevertheless, MRP logic is generally too simplistic to handle the demand-supply mismatching problems of high technology manufacturing that must consider multiple phases of demand and supply.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,272,389 discloses a method and system for capacity allocation in an assembly environment. The methods disclosed are not, however, suitable for high technology manufacturers, such as IC manufacturers.